Pale
by borderline-mary
Summary: When you live longer than humans do, you know how to make cherished things last, even when it costs you everything that makes life endurable. Hiei/Kurama, vignette.


Pale

_This is a weird 1000-word vignette that I wrote very late last night and revised very early this morning. Please tell me if it fails to be clear or to make any sense at all._

* * *

If they had learned nothing else of each other, they had learned that touch was dangerous.

Time had simply ceased to affect their interactions; they were, after all, both immortal in their own ways, and while neither knew precisely how much life was really left to them, the future was a long road and hazy. Days slurred together with years, losing themselves in repetition and sultry contentment, and in the blindingly quick flash-bolts of violence that marked life in the Makai. Equally slurred were the long nights of solitude within companionship, easy silences sometimes broken by quiet conversation about nothing that mattered—the past, the present, and the nonexistent, nonsensical future. Flights of whimsy only, and with no meaning; but it kept them sane enough. It was like pressing on into eternity together—that was their favorite way of looking at it. Knowing it would not last forever didn't make it any less likely that it would.

They had even found that there was pleasure in their existence, if only in each other's presence. Where being alone would have driven them to find purpose, together they were content to stagnate and let the world eddy and flow as it would, passing beneath them as unnoticed as the turning of the seasons or the sweeping of birds past the clouds. They capered through its cycles, playing to their strengths as always.

But they never touched. There were moments when it might have happened, times when they forgot to be careful and began to reach out; but through the sinking disorientation of unfocused vision, some opposing magnetism would remind them at the last second of the danger, and they would breeze past each other as though they had never meant to touch at all, allowing such tiny fractions of space to keep them separate that human eyes would not have been able to tell the difference between contact and avoidance. There would be a glance back, and a nod of apology, and it would be part of their formless past, forgotten until its next occurrence.

_"Hiei?"_ one would ask, smiling sadly over one shoulder as they passed.

_"What?"_ would invariably be the terse response.

_"Is it really worth it?"_

And the other would snort, shake his head, and reply back: _"I told you never to ask me that."_

Whether that answer indicated 'yes' or 'no' was never clear, but it didn't need to be—they always stayed together. They drifted in and out of each other's air like a pair of snowflakes, never reaching ground and always catching the same twist of wind to carry them farther into the world. Where they were made no difference. Sometimes they didn't even know.

Neither did they know each other—nor did they ever attempt that impossibility. There were no secrets, because they were never apart. There were no deceptions, because there was no point. But there was no sharing, and there was no _knowing;_ for there was no point in that, either. Knowing each other would only have hastened their days, when they wanted them to linger; it would have taken the slow and languid torpor of their lives and given it unwanted, unnecessary complexity. They were what they were, and that was always enough.

All they did know was that someday, the disorientation would overwhelm, and it would be the violent end of everything. Someday they would collide, and once they took hold of each other, they would cling so fiercely that both of them would break. The idyll they had built for themselves would warp, and they would _need _again—they would need purpose, they would need the future, and they would need each other too much. Touch was dangerous; it was demanding, it was controlling, and it was tied to an instinct that neither of them could control. It would undo them. But they liked to pretend, mockingly, ironically, that it would never come, and that they could continue on into entropy at arm's length as though there was nothing more they could ever want.

The acrid scents of the hunt entwined them; the mercury glow of Makai's moon bathed their home, their world, with a violet iridescence; and they ran the forests as they had always done, killed in dark as they had always done, shared the burden of mutual loneliness as they had always done. Together they weaved in and out of time and consciousness, asking nothing, receiving nothing, and giving nothing at all. Giving was just as dangerous, and they had nothing to give anyway. If they yearned, they never said; and if they despaired, they never let it show, for this was the lesser of evils, as they had agreed long ago. The ways of long life were written in their every motion and their every word. The one lived on the meticulous draw of sharp experience, while the other lived on pure instinct tainted by cynicism—but still, they had both reached the same conclusion: that there were some things that weren't worth having, when they would mean the demise of everything that pretended to matter.

It was funny, and they could even laugh bitterly about it sometimes, that they were in such perfect accord on the matter. It was the one way in which they could safely blend, and they savored it for that. There was so little else that was concrete anymore, except for each other. However long they could have that, even if it was a stumbling, half-awake existence in a world that cared nothing for them, was never long enough.

Someday, they would touch, and they would only stop touching when everything had fallen apart; but for now they merely drifted, and let companionship hold them to each other in a different, paler way.

_"Kurama?"_ one would ask, glancing briefly over one shoulder as they passed.

_"Yes?"_ would invariably be the gentle response.

_"…I don't know."_

And the other would smile, shake his head, and reply back: _"Neither do I."_


End file.
